1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in soldering iron heating devices and in particular to light weight, portable, self-contained furnaces or fire pots which are compact, easily refueled, economically and rapidly heated and fired by for example bottled gas.
2. Prior Art
The art of soldering together two separate metals with a metal of lesser melting point requires a large quantity of heat in order to bring the areas to be joined on the two separate metals up to a temperature in excess of the melting point of the soldering metal.
For this purpose sheet metal workers have consistently used a combustible fuel heated furnace to heat manual or hand-held soldering irons.
Most of the portable soldering iron furnaces or fire pots in use today for heating hand-held soldering irons are charcoal fired. These furnaces are troublesome, wasteful and expensive and involve such difficulties as the initial lighting of the charcoal, the maintaining of the fire at the desired heat output for an extended period, the extinguishing of the charcoal, the disposing of the fuel residue and the breathing of toxic fumes.
Other approaches have been considered such as gasoline (note for example U.S. Pat. No. 942,245, to E. T. Burgess, issued Dec. 7, 1909) or gas (note for example U.S. Pat. No. 1,024,320 to R. Eisenberg, issued Apr. 23, 1912; U.S. Pat. No. 1,088,230 to C. J. Johnson, issued Feb. 24, 1914; U.S. Pat. No. 1,401,514 to J. Blake, issued Dec. 27, 1921; U.S. Pat. No. 1,497,104 to E. H. Lamb, issued June 10, 1924; U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,444 to P. G. Varona, issued Apr. 3, 1973) or a standard blow torch (note for example U.S. Pat. No. 1,432,801 to M. V. Street, issued Oct. 24, 1922). With the exception of U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,444, all of these types of furnaces failed to adequately solve all of the fuel supply difficulties of the prior art. In addition, those which proved to be inadequate were not truly compact and portable, were clumsy to use or presented a dangerous explosive hazard.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,444 to P. G. Varona, issued Apr. 3, 1973, did present a readily portable soldering iron furnace which overcame the fuel supply difficulties of the prior art where other attempts had failed. However, the device requires separate insulation, has a substantially different configuration and weight distribution and has only a single heat source.
The present invention provides an alternate solution to the difficulties of the prior art. This alternate solution is new, is not obvious to one skilled in the art and is of great utility.